Oregon – KNOM Radio Missionhttp://www.knom.org/wp
96.1 FM | 780 AM | Yours for Western AlaskaTue, 26 Sep 2017 18:12:37 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.259285469Anvil City Square’s New Grass Ready to Shine for Solsticehttp://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2015/06/18/anvil-city-squares-new-grass-ready-to-shine-for-solstice/
Thu, 18 Jun 2015 19:11:10 +0000http://www.knom.org/wp/?p=16887With the orange fence down and the square now open, city crews are moving on to the second phase of the renovation: making room for a new playground.]]>

Just in time for the weekend summer solstice festivities, the orange fence is being rolled up and Nome’s Anvil City Square has officially re-opened.

The city road crew—along with the workers from the Parks and Recreation department—officially took down the orange plastic mesh fence, just days shy of one year after it was put up to protect a re-seeding project.

“It’s totally open,” said City Manager Josie Bahnke on Tuesday. “I’ve been informed there have been visitors and locals there taking pictures and playing on the lawn.”

Bahnke said the new playground equipment will start being installed by the end of the week.

A schematic of the playground expansion planned. Image: Nome Parks and Recreation Dept.

The new playground equipment, designed by Nome’s own Parks and Rec department alongside Oregon-based Playcraft Systems, is set to include more than 13 components. That includes swings, crawl tubes, and “spring riders” in the shapes of a salmon and a bear.

But Bahnke said there were still some final pieces of floral flair to which others have pledged to attend.

“Some finishing touches still need to take place,” she said. “A lot of the dredge buckets have been reserved by the Nome Preschool Association to plant flowers.”

Anvil City Square is now fully open for everything from picnics to people watching—but Bahnke says it may take crews a bit of time to completely install all the elements of the new playground.

]]>16887Three Weeks, No Flights: Diomede Residents Stranded without Mail, Food Deliverieshttp://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2015/02/11/three-weeks-no-flights-diomede-residents-stranded-without-mail-food-deliveries/
http://www.knom.org/wp/blog/2015/02/11/three-weeks-no-flights-diomede-residents-stranded-without-mail-food-deliveries/#commentsWed, 11 Feb 2015 19:56:28 +0000http://www.knom.org/wp/?p=14399Routine maintenance for the only helicopter providing flights to and from the Bering Strait island community of Little Diomede has left store shelves empty and essentials scarce.]]>http://www.knom.org/wp-audio/2015/02/2015-02-11-Diomede-No-Flights.mp3

The only aircraft flying to one of Alaska’s most remote communities has been down for maintenance for nearly three weeks—leaving residents of the Bering Strait community of Little Diomede with empty mailboxes, bare grocery store shelves, and no way on or off the island.

Andrea Okbealuk works at the Diomede school, and on Tuesday afternoon she was escorting children to lunch. The kids were eating alongside classmates, but also other members of the community, parents and aunties and grandfathers. No mail or cargo deliveries since Jan. 22 has left store shelves empty, and with no checks coming in the mail, wallets are thin and essentials hard to come by. So the school has opened its doors, serving nearly 300 lunches and dinners to Diomede residents since Saturday.

“In our store, it’s pretty bare. We do have a bunch of food here at the school, which will last for a while,” Okpealuk said. Hunters have been on the ice daily, she said, but strong winds, rough water, and poor ice conditions have made catching game difficult. “In our home,” she added, “I think the hardest part is having milk for the babies.”

Even with the school sharing its food, Okpealuk said, for mothers with young babies, no new stock on the shelves means there are few alternatives.

“It is hard when there’s no milk,” she said. “When you’ve switched your baby to regular canned milk to whole milk, to nonfat milk, to two percent milk, and then to nonfat milk again, and then now to powdered milk, it upsets the baby’s stomach.” She sighed. “A couple of us are going to that now.”

The needs go beyond the right food on the shelves. Late Friday night and into Saturday morning, an Army National Guard Blackhawk had to be dispatched to medevac a pregnant 18-year-old from Diomede to Nome’s Norton Sound Regional Hospital. While on the ground the Blackhawk crew and four medical providers were alerted to a two-month-old with an airway issue. That infant was identified as a “critical patient” and medevaced to Nome as well.

Diomede’s remote location means there are not many options when it comes to passenger and freight service to the island. Its unique geography—set along the shore of an island that’s little more than a mountain jutting sharply from the Bering Sea—means there’s no runway, save for the occasional ice runway that can be carved into the sea ice.

Erickson’s program director Chris Schuldt said the company only keeps a single helicopter—a twin-engine Bölkow BO-105—for service to Diomede. That helicopter has been down for routine maintenance in Anchorage since its last flight to Diomede in January.

“We’ve had some maintenance on the aircraft, but the goal is to return it to service in the next one to two days,” Schuldt said Tuesday. “Pending weather, [the helicopter] will return to Nome and begin operations as soon as that’s complete, [and] make sure our aircraft are in the top condition before we begin flying passengers and cargo again.”

Shuldt said Erickson’s customers, including DOT, are aware of the company’s maintenance status and plans to return to service this week. Erickson also contracts with the U.S. Postal Service for weekly mail service to Diomede.

According to Kawerak’s Pearl Mikulski, who worked on the EAS contract for the nonprofit in the past, the contract requires Erickson to make a certain number of trips each year, but otherwise allows the company to set its own schedule when it comes to flights, as well as stoppages for weather and repairs.

Kawerak can do little, Mikulski said, beyond cautioning Erickson to use the funds in such a way as to ensure flights last all year. That’s an especially difficult proposition during winters with poor ice conditions, Mikulski added, as the contract assumes an ice runway for part of the year. Last winter, that ice around Diomede wasn’t thick enough to support a runway.

Andrea Okpealuk said, for her and the residents of Diomede, every day without a helicopter means people are closer to not having what they need.

“Some of us do have meds that were supposed to come a couple weeks ago,” she said. “I’ve had meds that I ordered a couple weeks ago, and I just ran out.”

She sighed again. “Hopefully, in the next few days, we’ll get chopper service here.”